Consolidation is happening across the semiconductor industry, in ways that are very apparent and others that aren't so obvious.
On the chipmaker side, NXP's acquisition of Freescale, Avago's acquisition of Broadcom and LSI, and Intel's acquisition of Altera are so big that they require approval by multiple governments. Less obvious are moves such as Apple's build out of its processor team, a... » read more

DAC is over and everyone is asking – what was the theme this year? It is sometimes difficult to make such a determination because quite often the theme has been there for some time, but suddenly appears more obvious than it did in the past. Some years it is a new product or class of products.
The theme also can remain hidden, or disguised. As an example, people have been talking about the ... » read more

A year ago many people were making jokes quite openly about the IoT. It wasn't uncommon to hear quips about the Internet of Nothing, the Internet of Disconnected Things, the Internet of Cars, or some other variant that questioned just how connected everything would become.
The tenor of the conversation has changed significantly in the past year. The jokes are fewer, the stakes are higher. An... » read more

For the Internet of Things to really get rolling, it has to be bulletproof. And given the number of very high-profile security breaches in recent months, it has a long way to go before consumers or businesses will feel comfortable using any of a new wave of smart devices
That concern has prompted a wave of acquisitions from companies such as Intel (McAffee), Cadence (Jasper Design Automation... » read more

Security is big business, and it's increasingly part of business done between big businesses in the semiconductor market.
The deal that was announced this week between NXP and Qualcomm, adding a secure NFC module to the Snapdragon chip, is certainly good business. But what's really interesting about this arrangement is that it was done between two very prominent companies, which saw a potent... » read more

Mergers & Acquisitions
Synopsys continued expansion into the software security market with the acquisition of Codenomicon. The Finnish company was in the headlines this time last year when it discovered the Heartbleed bug during product testing.
Tools
Mentor Graphics released Calibre xACT, a parasitic extraction platform which automatically optimizes extraction techniques based on ... » read more